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Pete McMartin: Waking up next to the rainbow nation

It was America’s changing demographics — young people, women and minorities — as much as his record that sent Barack Obama back to the White House in Tuesday’s election.

For me, the most telling moment in the night came not when Ohio went Democrat or when the projections confirmed that, once again, Barack Obama would be president.

It was that moment when the cameras panned over the crowd at the Republican national headquarters. There was that uniform sea of white faces: the men, in suits, watching the returns as if their stock portfolios were evaporating before their eyes; the women, dressed for the occasion, including, memorably, one matron caught in profile by the camera, her wealth evident in the severe cut of her clothes, “a life of iron disciplines,” to quote Norman Mailer, “in the vertical lines of the upper lip.” Her face betrayed her barely contained anger, as if the election had not only been the country’s loss but a personal affront. She looked as if she wanted to give America a good scolding.

The Democratic headquarters in Chicago, in contrast, was contrast, its audience a study of the new mongrel United States — a happy crowd of black and white, Asian and Latino, young and old, but most of all young.

It was this mix that had returned Obama to the White House, and not his handling of the economic crisis, or his killing of Osama bin Laden, or his modest steps toward universal health care — though these, cumulatively, spoke well of his record.

It was demographics that reelected him. It was the inexorable pressure of a young ascendant electorate that was so diverse and had grown so disaffected that it could no longer be contained by a smug, ideologically rigid Right.

The result, to me, was even more significant than Obama’s election four years ago. Yes, he was then the first black president ever elected, a historic occasion inconceivable even a generation ago.

But the Republican ticket was so buffoonish in 2008 and the wreckage of the Bush presidency was still so fresh in voters’ minds that any Democrat would have won. Hillary Clinton would have taken it in a walk.

But this time around, Obama didn’t have the sheen of History. This time, he was a flesh and blood politician who fell short of the naive gushing of the Yes We Can crowd — what politician wouldn’t? — and he had to go back to the electorate and run on his record.

And that was the historic significance of this election:

It wasn’t about race — though race played its part. It wasn’t even about Obama. It was about a growing coalition of voters that, despite the lingering recession and record public debt, found enough common ground to rebuke the paternalism and naked self-interest of the conservative establishment. That paternalism especially alienated women, who flocked to Obama in record numbers. They let Mitt Romney know where he could shove his binders.

The various state referendums were an indication of just how liberal that electorate has become. The legalization of marijuana? An electorally endorsed acceptance of gay marriage (which, in Canada, had to be legalized by judicial decree)? And in California, which reversed an anti-taxation trend by voting for a higher sales tax and higher taxes on the wealthy? These were unthinkable a decade ago. Tuesday night, they marked an acceptance and embrace of the realities of modern society.

This doesn’t mean the U.S. has become Sweden overnight. Initiatives like those above won’t find a foothold in the red states for years to come. The divide between liberal and conservative ideologies in the U.S. remains wide and geographically stark. (As Jon Stewart said on the Daily Show Tuesday night, early returns had made it official: Romney had “won most of the Confederacy.”)

But even in the South, the Right is being forced to come to terms with those new realities. In Arizona and Texas, especially, Republicans will have to accommodate the growing Latino populations there, or see those conservative strongholds become swing states up for grabs. They might start by not asking illegal immigrants to voluntarily deport themselves, or by enacting search-and-seizure legislation that targets Latinos. Maybe it’s time for Republicans — to quote the defining line from the movie Lone Star — to forget the Alamo. They may have won that battle, but they’re losing the war.

For Canadians, it was a night that was thrilling to watch. And a little depressing, too. Contrary to all the Billy Bob caricatures of the U.S. we smugly hold, we watched a young, vibrant electorate set course for a new future.

Meanwhile, here, an autocratic government leads a somnambulent electorate in the opposite direction.

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